Hello

I think "hello day" when my eyes pop open at 430 am. I wish I could back to sleep, but I can't. So I'm here with you, writing. Hello page. 

Yesterday, I had an overwhelming sense of anxiety. Like the walls were closing in. I forced myself out of it by working on my podcast for this Wednesday. 

This morning, I wondered, was my off kilter mood due to the heat, or perhaps my back which was bothering me, or maybe that I hadn't exercised. I'd swam two days this week, I am aiming for three on average, and I noticed that on the days I did swim, my mood was better.

What I'm trying to figure out I suppose is how to be happy. How to be content with the day. How to not just get lost in tasks, but how to get connected with people. How to be connected and content with myself. 

It's easiest for me to connect on a literary or music level. I love getting up early and writing while drinking my first or second coffee of the day with music in the background.

Maybe I just need to start out small. Go for happiness in small batches. An hour. Take my mom to breakfast then to the grocery store. Find joy in picking out produce and replenishing my Diet Coke supply. 

It's the little things that matter most perhaps. That's it. I think, focus on the little things, on the day to day. It will all be okay.

Funny girl

So I consider myself a funny girl. At times, maybe too funny. I sometimes ask myself, am I a clown? The reason I wonder is that at times I feel like I'm not taken seriously. And for those who know me well, they know I'm a super serious person a lot of the time and passionate about the issues I care about.

Now some of you all may be thinking, she is a joker, or no she's not, but I know it's an issue I've had my whole life. People often don't see the sadness and seriousness beneath my humor. Humor is a way to deflect. I know this. 

Yet, I so want to be taken seriously. But not too seriously. Is that a hard line to walk? Definitely. 

And as some know, I also have a spine of steel. Truth is, I don't get scared anymore. I lived too much of my life that way, so I've said screw it and try to live life with fearlessness. 

On Wednesday, I had a big motion I had to argue in court. I had spent weeks researching it and writing it. As I argued it, I got very emotional because I cared so much about how it went. It was a constitutional issue that's important to me in the work I do. I tried to show how much the decision mattered to both my clients and the broken criminal system I work within. 

That night, I realized that it's okay to be vulnerable in your argument. To show you care so much. And I used the case law to make my argument and I know it resonated at least a little. 

Maybe what I'm trying to say is that yes, I'm a funny girl, but don't forget that I'm also a fighter, and a warrior and a passionate person. Always and forever. 

Nurture

It has been so hot. Yesterday it was 104 and for some in Southern California, it was even higher.

After laying out for ten minutes, I jumped in the pool in Oak Hills. It felt so refreshing, I had to jump in over and over. We only stayed in the pool for an hour. I could tell that my arms were turning red even with sunscreen. But the water, it felt like an icy cool healing. (Of course, I got water in my ears and spent the rest of the night jiggling my earlobes.)

It was soul sustaining that water. That's what writing is for me. Like jumping into cool water and when I come up after diving in, I can finally breathe. 

I have always had an ability to completely engross myself in something. For good and for bad. Television, music, writing. Yesterday afternoon, I spent hours watching a new Netflix chef competition show. My husband commented, "For someone who doesn't cook, you sure watch a lot of cooking shows."

I did no writing. I drank coffee, and about one pm, we ate desserts we had picked up instead of lunch. For dinner, I went and grabbed us a pizza to go so my husband wouldn't feel pressure to cook outside on the  grill in the heat.

I am starting to realize that not every day has to a writing day. Some days are just days when I want to drink my coffee and read or watch television. I never want writing to become another chore. Yes, it sustains me, and I need to stay on track with it, but it's also my joy, and life is hard enough without corrupting my passion. 

I've learned that my best stories come out after percolating for a bit and I'm just a vessel. They almost write themselves and it's more about the intention and putting myself in a place to receive, than about making myself do anything. I just want to have fun with it. So here's to finding your joy and nurturing it, while taking care of yourself too. 

And now it's my coffee time.

Cat person

Growing up, I would have considered myself a cat person. We each had a cat of our own. My cat was a white Persian with gorgeous, fluffy fur and emerald green eyes. Fittingly, her name was Whitey. My twin sister Jackie's cat was her brother, a Himalayan named Greyie. He was brown. They were both the kittens of my mom's cat who was named, again fittingly, Mama Cat. And our little sister Annie later got a grey tabby cat that we named Snuggles. 

I loved Whitey. She would jump on my bed when I got home from school. I would sleep with her at my feet. My best friend Melinda, who was not a cat person at all, would sometimes tell me on the walk to school with a disdainful eyebrow raise, "Did you know your shirt is covered in white cat fur?"

After law school, I stumbled upon a black cat named Leopold at a cat adoption fair at the mall next door to the corporate law firm where I worked. He mewed at me and I was in love. He was a snuggler and kept me company all through my Houston lonely days. My dad even watched Leopold for me for a time while I was moving to San Francisco to be with Adrian who was in dental school. Dad always said he was allergic to cats but my mom would catch him holding Leopold on his lap. 

When my mom and dad drove Leopoldo Bloom (that was his full name) to San Francisco, he got out at the rest stop and almost gave my mom a fit. When we moved back to the Inland Empire, Leopold was killed (by a bobcat I believe) when I was at the fair. I've told the story before, but I had the most blinding headache when I was leaving the fair and that was probably when he was howling for me. I dreamed about Leopold for weeks after he passed. It was a hard, deep depression and was all mixed up with the grief I still achingly felt for my dad passing the year prior. It was only when I saw Frodo, my black and white shih tzu, and adopted him that I felt a ray of sun back in my life. 

Losing Frodo this year, so suddenly from a brain tumor, felt like a knife was being pressed into my side over and over again. I couldn't breathe most days. Chewbacca and I would both lay in bed and sigh. Chewbacca usually comforts me when I'm sad, but he was so sad, I had to snap out of it to comfort him. That helped me through it. I made him eat. I changed his schedule. I would whisper to him and maybe to myself, "It's okay, Frodo is in a better place". 

Looking back, I still think I am naturally a cat person. But love doesn't know species and my cat affection is now reserved for my Chewbacca, a brown eyed shih tzu with golden fur who follows me around like a duck. 

So meow meow, ruff ruff and quack quack everyone. Happy Friday. 

Stories to find

As I sit here at 5 am thinking of where to go next with my writing, I think to myself that I still have so many stories that I haven't written. So so many. 

You see, my two books cover very specific periods of my life. My childhood mostly and my dad's death and some of my public defense career. What I haven't written about is my 20s when I was working my way through college. And I also haven't detailed much of my 30s and law firm life and my 40s which include my infertility struggles which I've only written a couple of pieces about. (As an aside, I had been working on a series of infertility essays. Then I put it aside. Maybe I'm just not ready. It's a hard, triggering topic to write about in my 50s staring at my life.)

The true beauty of writing memoir is that there's always more to cover. In my opinion, the very best essay pieces and full length memoirs are specific to a theme. They're not biographies. On the contrary, they're literary exercises in excavation. It's about the digging. The finding. The realizations. It's about figuring stuff out. Memoir is about growth. 

So I have decided that I will continue to dig and dig and then dig some more because my life is full of stories to write about. The everyday rote routine of life never ceases to amaze me. Plus, if a person can write a magnum opus of a novel about one day in Leopold Bloom's life like James Joyce did, then I can write a series of books about all of the highs and lows and joys and sadness inherent in my life. Can't I? Can't you?

I think so.

Hey baby it's the Fourth of July

There's a song X sings called "The Fourth of July". It's one of my favorites by them even though it's written by Dave Alvin of the Blasters. The chorus reads,

"On the stairs I smoke a
 cigarette alone
. Mexican kids are shooting
 fireworks below. And hey, baby, it's the Fourth of July. Hey, baby, it's the Fourth of July."

Yesterday was the Fourth of July. Maybe I shoulda started with that. It was uneventful. My husband and I woke up and went to the pet store and then to the dollar tree. 

When we got home, I made a potato salad and some elote to go with my husband's ribs. We listened to music on the patio. Ate chips and salsa. I called my sister Roberta in Kansas City. I watched a movie on Netflix with my mother-in-law. Then I read my moon cards. They were auspicious.

By seven pm, I was spent. My husband watched a soccer game downstairs while Chewbacca and I trotted upstairs. I jumped under the covers and patted the side of the bed and cuddled Chewbacca as he shivered at the loud bangs in the distance. 

Right before I tumbled into sleep, the lyric whispered in my head again, "Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July."

On Writing

Writing is, at times, a frustrating thing. I wake up early. I sit. I stare at the screen, my fingers still. What the heck am I going to write about? No one cares what I have to say. That's the sabotaging voice in my head. It's imaginary but also very real.

So I stop. 

The next morning I start again and draft a decent paragraph of a novel never to be written. I'm not good at fiction, says the voice in my head today. 

Then another early morning and it all comes out. A start of a piece. I ignore the voices telling me not to bother. I down two espressos and just write. I lose myself in it. It's almost unconscious writing. My fingers flying furiously like birds pecking at bits on the ground. My digits can barely keep up with the thoughts in my brain. I'm exhausted after and I have to get ready for work which I am almost relieved to be doing. It's something I know I can do. That I'm good at. That if I prepare for, I can accomplish something more than a few pages.

Then, it's a weekend day. I open my computer and ignore the urge to write and lose myself in Gilmore Girls which I've watched straight through five times at this point. The show makes me happy. My outline of my pilot mocks me from my computer which is open on my lap. I refuse to start that mammoth of a project. 

Now it's Sunday. And I sleep. I sleep most of the day. It feels like a relief. A relief from it all. I have no urge to write today. None at all. Or at the very least, none I will acknowledge. 

Feeling it

So I'm starting to realize some things about myself. My feelings get hurt easily and I often react immediately. I can be overly emotional and even snappy. I don't want to be like that anymore.

This I know, I'm too intense at times and bossy and obsessive. Lest you think I am too hard my myself, I also know my strengths. I'm caring, empathetic, organized, prepared, and I try to be kind. But what I want to be is laid back and easy. 

How do I make myself more relaxed? I want to be able to let things go.

What am I so anxious? What am I looking for? What am I really yearning for? My purpose? It's not at work. My job is my job. I do love the work, yet it is not how I define myself any longer. That leaves a question: how do I define myself? Truth be told, I'm not really sure, but I feel most like the "real" me in literary and academic spaces. I feel as if I can be my natural, organic self there. 

I think the point of all of this blathering on is that I'm really talking to myself. My goal this week is to not over focus or obsess over petty things. I need to be kind to others and even kinder to myself. 

Life is too short. It goes by quick, so quick that you can miss the important moments if you aren't present. Thus, I'm going to be there in the moment just being me. Feeling it. Taking it in.